Captured by : PG3. MASTHEAD LEFT
Facebook unveiled "Instant Games" allowing users of the world's biggest social network to play from its Messenger application or directly on their news feeds. The new games effort could be a step toward eventually monetising Messenger, which now has more than one billion users.
Instant Games is launching in 30 countries with 17 titles available including "Pac-Man" from Bandai Namco, Taito's "Space Invaders," Zynga's "Words with Friends" and King Digital's "Shuffle Cats Mini." While Facebook has previously been home to "social" games like Zynga's "FarmVille," this effort aims at smartphone users and also works with Messenger, its fast-growing communications platform. The initiative is the first time games will be "a platform inside of Messenger" and the first time Facebook has directly put games on mobile devices.
The concept is similar to that of "Instant Articles," which allows faster loading of news stories by hosting them on the powerful servers of Facebook instead of linking to a separate news site.
Instant Games will allow users to invite others and share results and scores, but has controls to prevent people from getting overwhelmed with requests to play.
